This disclosure relates to automatically changing characters associated with a current keyboard layout to characters of another keyboard layout.
A search engine can allow a user to provide a search query for which search results are returned in response. The query can include any character that the user is capable of generating with his or her input device. Input devices can have keys or buttons that are each capable of producing one of many characters. A keyboard, for example, can have multiple keyboard layouts. Each keyboard layout typically corresponds to the characters most frequency used within a particular writing system (e.g., a language). In countries whose writing systems are not based on the Latin alphabet, keyboards usually have at least two keyboard layouts, one for producing Latin characters (e.g., a US English keyboard layout), and another for producing characters of another writing system (e.g., Cyrillic, Devānagarī, Arabic, etc.).
Users can switch between two or more keyboard layouts by invoking switching command (e.g., using a single keystroke). The currently selected keyboard layout normally determines the characters produced by each key of the keyboard. A user may inadvertently use their input device to input keystrokes in one layout when they intended to input the keystrokes in another layout. For example, a user searching for “news” may inadvertently submit “” if the currently keyboard layout is a Hebrew keyboard layout, as the keystrokes that produce the characters “” in the Hebrew keyboard layout also produce the characters “news” on the corresponding Latin keyboard layout.